The developer turned to crowd-funding site Kickstarter to finance an all-new point-and-click adventure. It argued that traditional publishers baulked at the idea of backing a game in the financially-risky genre.
The project will be headed up by Tim Schafer (who made adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango), with help from Ron Gilbert (creator of cult classic Monkey Island). Backers will also get an episodic making-of documentary from 2 Player Productions.
The team smashed its initial goal of $400,000 (£254,400) within eight hours. It passed $1 million (£636,100) within its first day (though missed out on being the first million-dollar Kickstarter project to an iPhone dock). At $3.3 million, it's the biggest project in Kickstarter's history and enticed 87,138 backers to hand over their cash.
With the extra money Double Fine will expand the scope and ambition of the point-and-click adventure, and will pull in more people to work on the game. The project has also been expanded to include English voice over; support for Mac, Linux, iOS and Android; and translations into French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
Double Fine Adventure (a tentative title, by the way -- exact details of the game's plot, theme and style have been kept secret) wasn't the first game to get funded through fans. Other Kickstarter success stories include riotous indie platformer No Time To Explain, sci-fi iPhone game Star Command and Sundance Film Festival-winner Indie Game: The Movie.
But Double Fine's unprecedented success has led to an up-swell of new projects. Cipher Prime's trying to get a sequel to Auditorium (but it's not looking hot) and game developer Brian Fargo wants to fund a sequel to 80s RPG Wasteland. He's asking for a lot -- $900,000 (£570,000) -- but his studio has already raised more than half of that, in less than 24 hours.
Elsewhere, physics-led puzzler Pixel Sand was flat-lining for almost a month on Kickstarter. That was, until Double Fine appeared and donations to Pixel Sand more than doubled. The game has now met its funding goal.
So is this the end of the traditional developer-publisher relationship? Project leader and Double Fine founder Tim Schafer doesn't think so, but he reckons it's an empowering way to deliver risky projects to a devoted fanbase.
In a live-streamed celebration on UStream he said, "I don't want to say this is the end of the whole games industry as we know it -- it's not, and it's not a replacement of all publishers. But it does mean that if you've ever been told your part a a niche market, you can make things happen."
Thank You : wired.co.uk
The project will be headed up by Tim Schafer (who made adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango), with help from Ron Gilbert (creator of cult classic Monkey Island). Backers will also get an episodic making-of documentary from 2 Player Productions.
The team smashed its initial goal of $400,000 (£254,400) within eight hours. It passed $1 million (£636,100) within its first day (though missed out on being the first million-dollar Kickstarter project to an iPhone dock). At $3.3 million, it's the biggest project in Kickstarter's history and enticed 87,138 backers to hand over their cash.
With the extra money Double Fine will expand the scope and ambition of the point-and-click adventure, and will pull in more people to work on the game. The project has also been expanded to include English voice over; support for Mac, Linux, iOS and Android; and translations into French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
Double Fine Adventure (a tentative title, by the way -- exact details of the game's plot, theme and style have been kept secret) wasn't the first game to get funded through fans. Other Kickstarter success stories include riotous indie platformer No Time To Explain, sci-fi iPhone game Star Command and Sundance Film Festival-winner Indie Game: The Movie.
But Double Fine's unprecedented success has led to an up-swell of new projects. Cipher Prime's trying to get a sequel to Auditorium (but it's not looking hot) and game developer Brian Fargo wants to fund a sequel to 80s RPG Wasteland. He's asking for a lot -- $900,000 (£570,000) -- but his studio has already raised more than half of that, in less than 24 hours.
Elsewhere, physics-led puzzler Pixel Sand was flat-lining for almost a month on Kickstarter. That was, until Double Fine appeared and donations to Pixel Sand more than doubled. The game has now met its funding goal.
So is this the end of the traditional developer-publisher relationship? Project leader and Double Fine founder Tim Schafer doesn't think so, but he reckons it's an empowering way to deliver risky projects to a devoted fanbase.
In a live-streamed celebration on UStream he said, "I don't want to say this is the end of the whole games industry as we know it -- it's not, and it's not a replacement of all publishers. But it does mean that if you've ever been told your part a a niche market, you can make things happen."
Thank You : wired.co.uk
Posts
0 comments
Post a Comment